


Radio Waves

by kellym1410



Category: 7 Days to Die (Video Game), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Background Relationships, F/M, crossbows are a metaphor for love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-13 02:59:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18460079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kellym1410/pseuds/kellym1410
Summary: In a world marred by death, decay, and constant danger, a generation of survivors works to heal the wounds left on their world.





	1. Hammer Down

It had only been nine days after the first reported cases that the transmission came over the radio.

 

_ “--his is Lieutenant Com--” _

 

The sound descended into meaningless static, and those gathered around searched each other’s faces for answers.  Their leader, walking the line between resignation and dread, forcibly centered herself as she recognized the voice.  Willing her hand not to shake, she reached out and turned the dial, scanning the AM frequencies. Her breath caught in her throat as the transmission snapped back into clarity at 14 megahertz.

 

“-- _ s Lieutenant Commander Han Solo.  Los Angeles has fallen, I repeat, L.A. has fallen.  Containment has failed thanks to the goddamn geniuses at the CDC—” _

 

A different, anxious voice chimed in,  _ “Sir, may I remind you that this is a live transmission to potentially the last remainder of humanity.” _

 

_ “Shut up, Threepio!” _

__

There was a pause, but the connection remained live for a few agonizing moments as the group of survivors heard the sound of labored breathing over the radio and the groans of the hoard rapidly approaching the broadcast station where they had made camp.  All of their eyes turned to the Senator, who still rested her hand on the shortwave radio’s dial. There was a collective exhale of held breath as the speaker crackles to life again.

 

_ “--not enough time left to get to the ports, make your way to Navezgane National Park, 17 miles east of the Hollywood Sign.  It’s not safe, but it’s the best bad option that’s left. Operation Hammer Down is in effect, the Army will be conducting Air Strikes over the city.  I repeat, Operation Hammer Down is in effect, the city has fallen, get to Navezgane!”  _ Another pause, and then,  _ “Princess, if you’re listening, I l—” _

 

The connection goes dead.  

 

One of the group, a man with black curls and a jawline that screamed “moviestar,” if not for the clearly bought on a government salary cheap suit he was wearing, gently placed a hand on the leader’s shoulder.  “Senator, we can find a way to look for him.”

 

In the midst of her grief, she smiled in faint pride.  Tragedy and chaos had brought forth compassion and judgement in her aide, a man formerly known only by his boyish charisma and blind courage.  Blinking the tears back from her brown eyes, she shakily got to her feet. “Thank you, Poe, but for the first time in a thirty-seven year marriage, I’m going to try something new and actually listen to my husband.”  Leia Organa took a quavering breath as she assumed the tone that had seen her through endless debates and campaign rallies. “Gather your things. We’ll travel east while we still have the sunlight on our side. Remember,” she added as she tucked the shortwave radio under her arm, “while there’s light, there’s hope.”

 

* * *

 

In the military bunker constructed under Griffith Observatory, Han Solo’s hand hovered over the radio dial for moments after the connection went dead.   _ So this is it,  _ he thought to himself,  _ my luck’s finally run out. _

 

Maybe things weren’t entirely hopeless.  He took stock of the other three people in the concrete room.  His assistant, Threepio looked slightly more distressed than usually, but the other two, the mechanic and the security guard demanded his attention.   _ They’re survivors,  _ the thought struck him suddenly.

 

Hands moving feverishly, he gathered all of the gear and rations he could think of and thrust it into the mechanic’s arms.  “Get out of here and work your way east towards Navezgane. Move during the daylight across the rooftops.”

 

The girl’s face remained frozen in a determined grin.  “You’re coming with us.” Met with silence, she continued, “You said it yourself, the military’s going to bomb the city, we need to get out of here!”

 

Solo shook his head.  “Somebody has to stay and transmit the last data to the other potential survivors.  Besides,” he said while adopting the one sided smile that had been his identifier for so long, “Somebody handsome has to stay and balance out all of the ugly heading our way.”

 

The mechanic remained unconvinced.  “Couldn’t you just upload what you need to onto a flashdrive?  No one needs to die right now.”

 

Sad revelation dawn in the security guard’s eyes.  “Peanut, we need to go, and he has to stay.” He wrapped a gentle hand around her arm and guided her toward the steel door to the outside world.

 

She ripped herself out of his grasp.  “We are not going to let him stay behind!”

 

“He’s been bitten.”

 

“What?” the mechanic choked out.

 

“Don’t worry about an old man like me.  Besides, you’ll like Navezgane, there’s plenty of green there.”  Over the girl’s head, Han locked eyes with the other man and tried to silently communicate what needed to happen.  He nodded solemnly in response.

 

Once again, she was not having any of his charm.  “We can figure out a way to cure you, there has to be something here we can use, but we can’t just leave you!”   

 

Han sighed.   _ Time to return to the same old tricks.   _ “You know, I think you might be right.  Check your bag for the bottle of antibiotics I gave you earlier.”

 

The moment that she looked down towards her things, the security guard grasped her small body around the shoulders and dragged her towards the door as she kicked and screamed.

 

Met with the her furious eyes across the threshold, Han Solo felt something akin to tranquility.  Whatever would come to pass, he had saved the generation that would fix the mistakes of his own. “See you on the flipside, kid,” he said as the steel door slid shut.

 

The enraged pounding of the girl’s palm against metal stopped after four minutes, and Han was left with the creeping fever that ran up and down his body.  It wouldn’t be long until the sleep. And after...well, no good came from thinking about the after. An idea came to his mind, and he pulled a laptop across the table to face him.  As he typed in the phone number, his fingers went slower and slower, and his hand hovered over the ‘call’ button. He shook his head and closed the laptop. Better to not take the chance and remember what was good, what had worked.  He sat back in his chair as the screeching of the night hoards drew closer. He had pointed them all to Navezgane. He had done his part, and with a little luck, a lot of sweat, and a decent weapon, they might be some version of safe.  That would have to be enough.


	2. First Contact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey works on her bike, hunts a deer, and sees a shadow.

“Shit!” Rey yanked her hand back from the repurposed car battery as sparks lept out from the wires.  Sighing, she shook out her singed fingers, grasped the plastic edges with both hands, and yanked it out from under the bike’s engine.  As the carcass of the dead battery lay in front of her, Rey mourned the loss, of both time already spent, and hours to come. It would take weeks to find a suitable replacement.  She got up from her knees and took a few steps around her half-finished creation. In theory, the bike would be revolutionary: she could cross from one end of the park to another in the matter of an hour, drive to the nearby suburb, raid house by house, stick the supplies in the shopping basket she had duct taped to the back, and escape so quickly that not even the night hordes could catch her.  But right now, with a dead battery and only one working wheel, it was a waste of parts.

 

A snap of a twig in the forest to her right drew her attention back up.  She grinned. Maybe the day wasn’t wasted after all. She crouched into the low bushes, took the bow off her shoulder, and set her gaze on the stag.  Four working legs, two normal black eyes, no noticeable mutations, all these signs spelled out fresh meat for dinner that night. She reached behind her and felt the arrows in her quiver: rock tipped and iron tipped.  The decision was easy. The rock arrows were fine for rabbits, but this was the first deer she had seen in weeks, she had to use something sharper. Hands just barely shaking in anticipation, she knocked the arrow, drew the string back, and fired.

 

The arrow lodged itself in the stag’s flank.  It threw its head back in surprise and pain, and took off at a limping run through the trees and over the crest of a hill.  Scrambling to her feet, Rey slung the bow back over her shoulders and sprinted after it, following the trail of blood.

 

She found it lying in a clear, struggling to breathe.  Kneeling down beside it, Rey forcefully divorced her mind from any notions of disgust or sadness.  At this moment, hesitation could only hurt them both. “Sorry,” she whispered as she plunged the knife made out of bone into its neck.  Its eyes widened in shock, only to roll back into its head.

 

The easy part over, it was time to get to work.  She squinted at the afternoon sun from behind her goggles and set the timer on her cheap, plastic watch.  Three hours and forty-minutes of daylight left, minus the forty minutes it would take to walk to camp with the deer’s meat and hide, giving her just over three hours to carve away.  Three years ago, she would have needed every second of that time, but now she could realistically finish the work in two hours, return at a leisurely pace to the abandoned cabin to hole up for the night, and walk back to the settlement with the leftovers when the sun rose.

 

A cloud darkened the sun as she got to work on the first leg.  She was so consumed with her task that she didn’t notice the sound of breathing for nearly thirty seconds.

 

_ Walkers!   _ Her senses leapt to life, but her body remained frozen in fear.  She didn’t have the time to take her bow off her shoulders, and could only use her crude knife for her defense.  The presence she felt was right in front of her.

 

Her eyes slowly scanned up to reveal a towering figure looming above her, blocking out the sun.  Dressed entirely in black including a mask covering its entire head, Rey could not even tell if it was a man or a woman standing before her.  It wasn’t a walker, though: its posture was too straight, it was too  _ still  _ as it stood looking her.

 

Crouched on the ground, Rey mentally ran through what to do.  It wasn’t a walker, but it still might be dangerous. It could kill her and steal her deer.  She knew that she was the only one from the settlement in this part of the forest, it couldn’t be another survivor, unless…

 

She glanced at the vicious-looking hunting knife fastened at its waist and confirmed her suspicion.  It was one of  _ them.   _ But, even if it was a part of that group of murderers, it hadn’t tried to kill her.  She still had hope.

 

“Back off,” she rasped, deepening her voice in an attempt to scare off this invader.  The effect sounded comical, even to her own ears.

 

What was surprising was that the shadow listened to her.  It turned on its heel and stalked back into the trees, quickly disappearing from her sight.

 

Moved by terror, Rey hacked what she could from the deer and sprinted back to the cabin made out of rotting wood where she would be spending the night.

 

As she set up the fireplace and set empty cans by the doorways, she made a mental note to ask Leia or Poe or somebody to reassign her to a different part of the forest.  Somebody else could deal with shadows stalking them through the woods. She was a scavenger, not a fighter. She could not be expected to reckon with monsters that that masked figure represented.

 

She reflected that it was a little hypocritical of her to villinainize the figure solely by the mask, as she removed the hard hat, goggles, and bandana that together covered every inch of her face.

 

After boiling the meat so the smell wouldn’t attract walkers during the night and eating her share, Rey laid down on the dingy mattress in the corner and sunk into a black sleep.

* * *

 

_ Halfway done, Rey thought to herself as she stepped out from her job in the bike shop onto the L.A. sidewalk lit by the late afternoon sun.  Unchaining her bike from the rack, she mentally prepared for the ride across town. Normally, she hated her work at Crait Coffee House. However, the possibility of seeing him put a faint smile on her face as she sped through the traffic-heavy streets.  Maybe today would finally be the day. Maybe he would finally find the words he always seemed to be searching for. _

* * *

 

As Rey stepped outside of the cabin as the rising sun chased off the night hordes, she heard the faint, crackling sound of static in the tall grass, about thirty feet from the cabin.  Running towards the noise in the hopes that it would lead to more parts for her bike, she found a black walkie-talkie in her hands.

 

_ “--anyone there?  I repeat, is anyone there?”  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm writing the Zombie AU that nobody asked for, but I hope you enjoy all the same!! Pretty please comment/kudos/bookmark if you enjoyed! Also, my tumblr is wewillavenge-it if you want to stop by there! Next time, we'll hear who's on the other end of the radio!


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